Tag Archives: gop

For those of you saying they don’t like the GOP as it stands now and that they’ll sit out the next election, you’re not quite on the right track. You have the right idea, which is not to reward politicians who constantly betray you, but by merely sitting out you are denying yourselves the opportunity to send a real message. So take a moment and consider some better ways to register your displeasure.

Side sorting: Not voting is a trivial response. Actively showing up and purge voting a candidate, which is what I’ll be doing to Jeb if he’s the nominee, makes a much louder statement. To purge vote, vote against the nominee and for the person most likely to defeat them. Yes, this may mean a Democrat will win, but this is not a tactic to use unless the R and D are so indistinguishable that you get big government either way. As the name states, it also helps sort all of your elected opposition to the same party. We don’t need two parties of enemies as we have right now.

Conditional support: Sick of the fact politicians do U-turns after they are elected? Quit supporting them if that happens. Some of them may realize that the rabid energy of the left never ends and that they would like defenders. So they can either keep doing what they promised to do, or you can sit back and relax as the liberals shred them in confetti and toss them all over DC. If enough of us do that, this will become clear.

Shill control: Here’s the problem with establishment shills trolling blogs and media. Many of them are likely staffers or PR flaks, which means they’re being paid to use social engineering tactics on you and you can only respond to them in your free time. Since this is vote whipping and not argument in good faith, engaging them is hardly useful. As it’s March 2015 as of this writing and I’m already seeing use of the purity strawman and the ‘whiny baby’ card, we’re all going to have to find ways to deal with this because the grinding has begun early. The answer is to quit tolerating it and engage in shill control.

Someone in a blog or in media can’t stop shilling for more of the same? Write them off. Blog won’t deal with the truly vile trolls? Stop visiting it. I did this with HotAir about a month ago and I couldn’t be happier about it. Why should I give anyone page hits and ad clicks, buy their books, or give them ratings just so they can slap me? Head over to Badblue.com and you might find a replacement you’ll like better.

Sound extreme? Look back at 2014 and answer for yourself if a line was crossed by the Establishment or not. Take a look at the behavior or McConnell and Boehner and decide if any greater goods are being served by their placement into power. Was all the effort to beat you into submission in the service of anything worthwhile? Is Obama being stopped? Anyone who is trying to enforce more of the same after all of this by brutalizing their readers or listeners isn’t part of the solution, so why reward them for it?

Want to answer all the betrayals and defeats your so-called leaders keep inflicting on you? Think a little bigger than ‘stay home’ because you have far more options.

Honestly, if you’re seeing the news of a proposed 4 trillion dollar plus budget and you’re not ready to rant about it, you haven’t given it that much thought. Even by the standards of our profligate monster of a government this is outrageous. Four. Trillion. Dollars.

How does any reasonable, semi-responsible individual even wrap their mind around that much money? How would anyone even think to call budgets of even three trillion plus ‘austerity’ and expect to be taken seriously? Do you know how many countries on Earth can even dream of GDP’s that size, much less government budgets?

The fact any annual spending over the entire Obama administration could be described as ‘austerity’ without the speaker of that word being laughed off the planet is on account of two things. First, that the President is a Democrat and was going to be backed up by the media which continues to provide cover. Second, Obama’s supposed opposition in the GOP is so feckless he can get away with it. That makes the increasingly implausible and generous assumption that his supposed opponents aren’t simply complicit in Big Government and liking it as much as he does.

How about the GOP trying using the power of the purse for once to tighten the belt ever so slightly in the face of this monument to fiscal gluttony? It seems like an easy target, even for them. Besides, if they can’t demonstrate that $4,000,000,000,000+ is a bit much to spend, they really weren’t worth the effort to put back in charge.

The latest one is on defunding Obamacare, which is likely due to behind-the-scenes pressure from McConnell (his primary opponent can be found here). There’s been plenty of press regarding it too, but there’s no real reason to care about the usual voices of failure telling us to do all of the same sorts of things that keep us failing. It’s the same broken record of capitulation.

When it comes to the bulk of the GOP actually doing their jobs, it’s just never time. Once, it was about how we’ll get them next time. We’re childish and we don’t know How Washington Works. Or everyone’s not-favorite assertion of a huge loss being a symbolic victory.

You can all but hear the tick in the vinyl as it skips back to another excuse.

This time, it’s just not smart. Nothing will come of it. Obama is still President. Well, if their argument is that there should be no opposition action for so long as Obama is President, why should the GOP sorts that keep telling us to quit retain their jobs? The fact their seats aren’t Democrat controlled surely offends Mighty Obama the First. We should appease him with their careers. They don’t do much beyond lose anyway.

As is typical, conservatives are being blamed for the loss last week. The fact we put Cruz, Fischer, and Flake into office isn’t mentioned. The fact Senator Brown lost his seat running away from the Tea Party as fast as his moderate legs could carry him isn’t mentioned. The fact the Republican nominee was yet another a moderate who, despite some strong positive campaigning, wouldn’t attack Obama a la McCain 2.0 isn’t mentioned. But it must be our fault anyway, if only because Establishment politicians don’t take blame.

There’s just one problem with the theory that we now need amnesty and we can add support by attacking the rich. That brand is already taken. The Democrats own it lock, stock, and barrel, and with the MSM to back them up on retaining it, no amount of liberalism from the Republicans will so much as cause it to be knocked even slightly ajar.

Giving the Democrats what they want or ‘compromising’ with them has always resulted in them getting the credit and the Republicans getting the blame. Bush 41 breaking his no new taxes pledge cost him his job. Reagan granted amnesty in exchange for security considerations he never received and the Republicans promptly started losing percentages of the Hispanic vote (Want to know how to appeal to them? Try looking at Texas first). The House was retaken in 2010 by the efforts of the Tea Party along with gains in the Senate, and two years of the Republicans attacking them for it earned them the 2012 election cycle losses that should have been the other way around. No one who retired over Obamacare need have bothered.

Say they plow through anyway and go full liberal, then what? Not one liberal will peel away from the Democrats. Plus, they’ll get the credit for ‘forcing’ the Republicans into line if the Republicans are even mentioned at all. What’s left of their base will certainly blame them though, and not enough moderates and independents will be gained to make up the difference.

The GOP cannot win as a liberal party because liberal is already taken by a party in no danger of losing the title. No current Democrat voters will want Dem-light if they already have the real thing. At this point though, it might just Whig the Republicans out of existence.